The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League: Pressure, Opportunity and Strategy - Core
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Journal of Asia-PacificThe
Studies
Mobilization
(Waseda of
University)
Cyber-Nationalism
No. 30 (January
by the2018)
Communist Youth League
The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the
Communist Youth League:
Pressure, Opportunity and Strategy
Nini Pan†
In the recent-year attempt of Chinese Party and governmental sections to maintain and improve
their political functions in network age, the performance of the Chinese Communist Youth League
(CCYL) has seemed to be quite prominent for its strategy to utilize and strengthen the cyber nationalism
or patriotism, according to the official interpretation. In China s hottest online social networks and
video-sharing sites mainly attracting youth, with Sina Weibo and Bilibili Video as typical, the CCYL has
opened official channels. Online operators of the League adapt their nationalist mobilization to the cyber
trend trough popularizing propaganda information, participating in discussion on hot topical news,
making and sharing animation videos, and so on. The activeness of the CCYL online can be attributed
to two ities : necessity and possibility. The willingness of the highest-level leadership to rebuild mobili-
zation function of CPC mass leagues has put heavy political pressure, urging the CCYL to innovate work-
ing methods. And meanwhile, a new type of nationalist emotion among youth provided ready-made re-
sources for this league to utilize. In practice, lower-level young staff of the CCYL propaganda section
who were also skilled cyber surfers took dominance, by the aid of learning from political communication
experiences of developed democracies and integrating nationalist networks among young professionals
and activists.
Key Words: CCYL, Party and League construction ( 团 设), nationalist mobilization, voluntary
50 cent ( ), Sina Weibo ( ), Bilibili Video (哔 哔 视频)
Introduction
During recent years in China, in consideration of the change of public opinion in network age envi-
ronment and the political guideline of building service type government (fu wu xing zheng fu, 务
), all Party and governmental institutions, either at the central, local or basic level, have been at-
tempting to improve their ability of public relations. This move has two purposes separately for gover-
nance and politics. For governance, by learning a large amount of lessons from emergency dealing, the
government takes promotion of media PR as an approach to alleviate potential troubles generally
caused by information control and bad communication techniques of untrained bureaucrats. In other
words, it s a dependent response to the growth of the public, and institutions or bureaucrats can learn
well-developed methods from their counterparts in developed democracies. However, such move also
has an implication of re-politicalize the Chinese society with Chinese-characteristically socialist col-
or, according to the willingness of the current leadership. And thus, the expanding and changing cyber
society becomes both a challenge to and opportunity for Chinese politics. The Party-state is just try-
†
Associate Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Chongqing University, China
139Nini Pan
ing to search for new approaches to embed political leading in this internet jungle.
Among these political attempts, the performance of the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL)
has seemed to be quite prominent for its strategy to utilize and strengthen the cyber nationalism or
patriotism, according to the official interpretation. In China s hottest online social networks and vid-
eo-sharing sites mainly attracting youth this article will take the sites of Sina Weibo and Bilibili Video
as examples the CCYL has opened official channels. Online operators of the League adapt itself to
the cyber trend trough popularizing propaganda information, participating in discussion on hot top-
ical news, making and sharing animation videos, and so on. From 2013, when the CCYL firstly opened
its channel on Weibo and began its exploration of methods for opinion orientation, it has drawn more
and more attraction and even built a cyber emotion association. Of courses, the evaluation on its per-
formance is controversial.
Why has the CCYL performed such activeness in Chinese cyber space? It may be attributed to two
-ities : necessity and possibility or in other words, pressure and opportunity. On necessity/pressure,
the CCYL, which was originally created in revolution era, as the young wing of CPC, in order to mobi-
lize and integrate the young energy of resistance, lost its irreplaceable position in reform era, when
technology bureaucracy and political prudence have been emphasized, with its political function exist-
ing in name only, despite of the maintenance of its function as promoting elite cadres. And, when the
current authority with Xi Jinping at the core highly values the historical organizing ability of the Party,
the strong political willingness makes a heavy pressure on the CCYL to prove their practical function
as an organization.
Under the political pressure and new demands of the highest-level authority, however, a relatively
new type of cyber nationalism rising from 2008 mainly developed among the youth provided the
CCYL with an opportunity. The CCYL propaganda section, especially, has taken it a critical chance to
rebuild its mobilization function by utilizing and orienting this trend. And moreover, despite of the
decline, CCYL still keeps its tightknit organizational structure from the central to the basic level, with
about 80 90 million members, aged from 14 to 28. Such institutional resources, which might not have
played any important role for a long period, have reserved potential intelligence for the CCYL to create
a new style in order to guide the youth s nationalism/patriotism in an imperceptible way.
1. Pressure and Opportunity for the CCYL
1.1 Decline in organizational function
The establishment of a young wing has been a common practice of various communist parties. In
China, the Youth League founded in 1920, even one year earlier than CPC itself. As a parallel youth or-
ganization affiliated with the CPC, CCYL is organized on the Party pattern at various levels, generally
plays as the Party s assistant and backup. During the revolutionary era, its crucial functions are clear.
For one hand, it served as an intermediation between the CPC and young revolutionaries or those of
potential, communicating party policies to, assisting organizational construction and directing activi-
140The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
ties of them. On the other hand, it recruited, trained and investigated young people for CPC member-
ship and reserved cadres for leadership. Accordingly, the effects of CCYL operation strongly influ-
enced the sustainability of the revolution.
However, into the reform era, the CCYL began to share a similar crucial problem with the CPC,
which is, how to embed the political function of leading in daily governance of the socialism with
Chinese characteristics. And, the dilemma for the young wing was even more severe. On the contrary
to the revolution or Mao era, when the youth had been endowed with political values of clearing out
decaying traditions and inspiring the future,1 during the reform era highly depending on professional
skills and prudent administration, youth has been properly excluded from the political sphere. In
other words, it wouldn t make any sense for youth s political participation, in constitutional or practi-
cal level.2
And thus, only one realistic function of the CCLY left, as an incubator and elevator for young cad-
res, and the concept of Youth League faction then have become familiar to researchers on Chinese
informal factional politics. By summarizing analyses on Youth League faction, it s suggested to have
had two factions. One comprised cadres of the Youth League background who supported Hu Yao-
bang, who had been the general secretary of the Youth League and retained tremendous influence.
And the implicit ties among them are reformists. At the very beginning of reform, the youth was
judged as a potential existence to embody new thoughts, and thus, younger cadres had been provided
more promotions because they might be more capable and knowledgeable in modern economic devel-
opment and less affected by past convictions. And especially, the appointment of a position in the
Youth League system kept an important leverage for a political patron to promote selected prominent
youth. A case can be found from the rise of Hu Jintao, the forth generation of leading core. After
long-term working in technical post, his first political (for Party affairs) position was the secretary of
the Gansu Provincial Committee of the CCYL, and the subsequent involvement in youth and person-
nel affairs made a straight road for the well-educated engineer into the high political level in the 12th
Party Congress, when he was appointed Secretary of the Communist Youth League Central Commit-
tee and he became President of the All-China Youth Federation the next year.3
When Hu Jintao was elected as the General Secretary in 2002, observers again paid attention to the
rate of cadres with the background of Youth League experiences in Hu s two administrative terms. The
research of Bo Zhiyue on the background source of elites in 17th Party Congress of 2007, found the
prominence of CCYL group, expanding from 57 in the 16th Central Committee to 82, with 41 full
1
The political implication of youth might have been mostly manifested by the speech of Mao Zedong to Chinese students and
young interns in Moscow on November 17, 1957. It started as, The world is both yours and ours but, nevertheless, it s yours
after all. Being full of vigor and vitality, you youth are in your blossom, like the rising sun between 8 and 9 in the morning.
Hopes are posed on you.
2
Not only the Constitution and related laws on political events stipulate the age limit, but also in public affairs, young people s
heroic action used to be highly praised in traditional propaganda has gradually faded out from the 1990s.
3
See more details in: Richard Daniel Ewing, Hu Jintao: The Making of a Chinese General Secretary, The China Quarterly, No.
173 (Mar., 2003), pp. 17 34.
141Nini Pan
members and 41 alternate members. And further, at the core level of decision-making, former CCYL
cadres had two positions in the Politburo Standing Committee and six in the Politburo.4 However, it s
hard to say that the second Youth League faction had direct political lineage with the former, or ei-
ther they had a common political bias like the former use to.5
On the contrary to the increasing CCYL prominence in the high-level and central politics, its orga-
nizational function had hollowed out. Especially at the basic level, the quantity of Youth League units
in public institutions had decreased from the 1990s.6 And in addition, basic-level Youth League orga-
nizations play their role more in entertaining events and other daily services. The mixture of factional
competition at high levels and political incapability of the organization finally led to a strict criti-
cism and pressure for rectification.
1.2 Political pressure and opportunity
After a long-time unreality of the Youth League organization, however, into Xi Jinping s adminis-
tration, according to the political preference to strict Party construction, the supervision and urge on
Youth League, which tried to centralize its power resources from particular factions to the authority
and made it operate again for mass mobilization, had been put into the core rank of the Party s work.
The leadership s sharp criticism and a set of related policy-making and implementation have made a
heavy pressure on the Youth League system to innovate working methods to prove their political loyal-
ty and unique role in the reform era.
Early from 2013, Xi, the CPC Secretary General, has continuingly mentioned his attention on youth
work on various speech and writing occasions. And, on December 29th of 2014, this willingness was
deliberately embodied into the document of Suggestions on the strengthening and improvement of
CPC mass and league work ( 关 进 团 见 ), proposed by a meeting
of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee. After a half-year learning inside the Party system, on
July 7th of 2015, this document was re-discussed in a special meeting for mass and league work with
all the 7 members of Politburo Standing Committee in participation, which was unprecedented in the
Party s history, and two days later, the document was formally published.
According to this document, weak points of the Youth League system and also other Party s
leagues responsible for mass work are summarized into three as: a) basic-level units are generally
weak in foundation ability, effective coverage, lacking attraction and cohesion to the mass, especially in
4
For more details, see: Zhiyue Bo, China s Elite Politics Governance and Democratization Series on Contemporary China, pp.
147 166.
5
There s also analysis on their sharing bias. For example, Li Cheng of Brookings Institution argued that The Youth League fac-
tion belongs to the populist faction, which is different form elitist coalition, consisting of officials who have relatively hum-
ble backgrounds and climbed from the grassroots, and therefore focusing more on societal harmony and equality. See: Cheng
Li, One party, two coalitions in China s politics, Brookings Institution. August 16, 2009.(http://www.eastasiaforum.
org/2009/08/16/one-party-two-coalitions-in-chinas-politics/)
6
See Shaoguang Wang and Jianyu He, Community Revolution in China: Outlining Associational Map of Chinese, (
团 ), Zhejiang Academic Journal ( ), Vol. 6, No. 149, 2004, pp. 71 77.
142The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
burgeoning social sphere; b) some units operate in a bureaucratic way and divorce from the mass,
without progressing consciousness and innovative spirit; c) the ability, quality and working of league
cadres needs to be improved.7 And these contents were further distilled, on February 2 of 2016, when
the Central inspection team ( 视组 ) sent to the CCYL office transferred Xi s consideration of
the reform, into four -ations : bureaucratization, administration, aristocratic stylization and entertain-
mentization ( 关 贵 娱乐 ). Accordingly, the document proposed four aspects
of guidelines as to: a) improve the constitution, structural organization and operating mechanism of
the CCYL leadership, especially significantly increase the ratio of members from the basic level and
frontline post; b) reform the selection, assignment and management of CCYL cadres, with weakening
limits of age and enhancing cadres direct communication with common young people; c) reform and
innovate strategies and methods of routines, events and organizational development at basic level, with
highly emphasizing the creative work on internet; d) improve the Party and governmental support and
assurance for Youth Leagues.8
Based on these guidelines, we may find some encouraging factors, besides the pressure and urge, for
the CCYL propaganda to operate on internet. Firstly, the document clearly emphasizes a cyber Youth
League ( 团 ) construction plan, for which, the burgeoning sphere of internet factually ex-
ceeds customary practice of veteran bureaucrats, and accordingly, leaves young staff at lower levels
more free space of action. And in addition, these guidelines demand the Youth League work to depend
more on young or common Youth League members in principle. Finally, the emphasis on innova-
tion and de-bureaucratization provides young staff of propaganda a practical legitimacy to utilize cy-
ber cultural resources for a different mobilization. This is not only a theoretical conjecture, but actually
has developed into a focus point of the CCYL to build its unique ability. A most intuitive evidence is
that in February of 2016, when the CCYL top staff responded to the comments from the Central in-
spection team, they announced to put more efforts to incorporate more leaders of young associations,
cyber commentators, new media journalists and returned students, 9 who were taken as effective lead-
ing power of cyber opinion and its cultural style.
1.3 A new-type cyber nationalism for utilization
While the willingness of Party leadership to strengthen organizational construction and resume mo-
bilization ability are continuously bringing pressure on and opportunity especially for lower-rank
young staff in marginalized sectors, a particular new trend of the cyber sphere has offered net surfers
serving the CCYL propaganda another chance. A new emotion developed by young urban national-
7
See: Suggestions on the strengthening and improvement of CPC mass and league work, the authorized release of Xinhua
Agency, July 9, 2015. (http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2015-07/09/c_1115875561.htm)
8
Ibid.
9
The CCYL began to tackle the four -ations’ problem as response to the severe criticism from the Central inspection team,
Union Morning Post (Lianhe Zaobao), April 27, 2016. (http://www.zaobao.com/special/report/politic/cnpol/story
20160427-610015/)
143Nini Pan
ists, which had widely spread around the 2008 Beijing Olympics, usually jokingly called themselves as
voluntary 50-cent ( ), which will be explained in details at the end of this chapter, has built a
10
cyber cultural foundation.
Observers outlined a different image of this new type of young nationalists in defense of Beijing
Olympics and protest against Tibetan separatism, which was challengeable to be understood and im-
aged for either academic observers or veteran officials in Chinese government:
In March and April of 2008, cheerful, miniskirted and spiky-haired Chinese student demonstrators
filled city streets and university campuses from San Francisco to Sydney, waving red flags and chanting
patriotic songs while snapping photos of each other. The students, and graduates, were protesting at
Western media coverage of recent rioting in Tibet, and protecting the Olympic torch relay from heck-
lers. When they returned home from the demonstrations, they posted their accounts on blogs, online
bulletin boards and discussion forums and uploaded video clips and photos. Millions of Chinese Inter-
net users read their stories, circulated their pictures and cheered them on to fight for the nation. The
overseas rallies became a national affair. Demonstrators were applauded with admiration and encour-
aged to persevere when facing confrontations, while their opponents, if Chinese, were condemned as
11
traitors.
The visible appearance and behavior model of nationalist demonstrators described above in 2008
may be the first and most observable point, and it could be also applied to the domestic youth. Gener-
ally, analyses on post-Mao nationalism couldn t be isolated from the view on framing conflicts be-
tween reform and anti-reform. The two topics have been connected in two lines. In one line, the
symbiosis of reform and opening (to developed western countries in discourse and practice has natu-
rally made the concept of nationalism a synonym to seclusion. And in the other line, nationalism
has been judged as an effective alternative to hollowing out communist/socialist ideology for the post-
Mao administrations to maintain political legitimacy with preventing thorough political reform.12 And
thus, a vivid description of a post-Mao nationalist has been naturally connected with some simple
factors, single or multiple: being older in age, being young without social experiences, bad education,
ill temper, lower social class, living in less-developed areas especially rural places or small cities in the
10
The author used to analyze characteristic elements of this new-type nationalism, see: Whether 50cent or Citizen : Analysis
on Cause and Discourse of Voluntary 50-cent in Network Communication, ( 联 传
缘 话语 ), Journalism Bimonthly ( 闻 ), Vol. 3, 2015, pp. 91 100. And also see: Geremie Barm?, China s Flat
Earth: History and 8 August 2008, The China Quarterly, No. 197 (2009), pp. 64 86; Kevin Latham, Media, the Olympics and
the Search for the Real China , The China Quarterly, No. 197 (2009), pp. 25 43; Pál Nyíri, Juan Zhang and Merriden Varrall,
China s Cosmopolitan Nationalists: Heroes and Traitors of the 2008 Olympics, The China Journal, No. 63, 2010, pp. 25 55;
James Leibold, The Beijing Olympics and China s Conflicted National Form, The China Journal, No. 63, 2010, pp. 1 24.
11
Nyíri, Zhang and Varrall, China s Cosmopolitan Nationalists, p. 25.
12
See research on Post-Mao populist nationalism for example: Jonathan Unger (ed.), Chinese Nationalism, Armonk: M. E.
Sharpe 1996; Peter Hayes Gries, Tears of Rage: Chinese Nationalist Reactions to the Belgrade Embassy Bombing, The China
Journal, No. 46, 2001, pp. 25 43; Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity
Under Reform, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003; Peter Hayes Gries, China s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy,
University of California Press, 2004; Vanessa Fong, Filial Nationalism among Chinese Teenagers with Global Identities,
American Ethnologist, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2004, pp. 631 648; Xu Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007.
144The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
inner land. In other words, either they couldn t have adapted to the reform (or be able to benefit from
the process), or they might be easily incited especially by official propaganda, and that why they de-
pended more on the political authority. And on the contrary, people who had opposite qualities, which
might be collectively called as (rising) middle class by part of scholars and observers on civil societal
growth, would be expected to promote contentious politics challenging the authority. However, such
young nationalist demonstrators, showed a paradox, with their position on the frontline of the open-
ing, coming from stable and comfortable middle-class families, a majority of them coming from cos-
tal metropolis, relatively good education, innate sense of modernity and living experiences, and net-
work information environment.
Another point for this new type was that the target they set to perform nationalism or patriotism
was not particular imperialist states especially Japan and U.S.A, with the former playing the most
negative role among big powers who had damaged the sovereignty and independence of China, and
the latter taken as always hindering China s peaceful development but turned to mass media who
were judged to distort truth and lying intellectuals considered to trait the motherland. In this na-
tionalist wave, besides a number of posted articles to criticize Western media professionalism and
sharing videos to revealing the truth attaining popularity and enthusiastic responses, even a website
named anti-CNN was established to specially collect and discuss the information on distortion and
treason, playing as an important platform for youth to find comrades and promote further actions
on-and-off-line. It should be noted that, this article will not examine whether this accusation was true
or false, only take it an existing feature for analysis.
Finally, this new-type nationalists stylized themselves with pop culture and sub culture, cultivated in
their similar consumption experiences to youth in developed countries. This style, on one hand, made
13
them seem cosmopolitan rather than filial nationalist mainly sourced to Chinese ancient tradi-
tion. For example, they drew Japanese-style manga, using a handsome character or lovely bunnies to
personify PRC and adapt to stories used to be told by textbooks and propaganda, or they appreciated
revolutionary and patriotic songs with popular aesthetic sense. On the other hand, different from the
stereotype of angry youth ( 愤 ), this new type seemed to be happily enjoying romantic emotions
brought by the past of CPC/PRC and breaking though the intellectual monopoly as a new man
in network age. The naming of voluntary 50-cent might have vividly reflected such cultural sense of
playing. This phrase was originally a protest to the widespread accusation of 50-cent, with
self-mockery. As possibly not foreign to researchers, 50-cent, whose official name was cyber com-
mentator, were believed to be hired or administratively ordered by the Chinese government to disrupt
or mislead public discussions on internet.14 And, new-type young nationalists created the concept of
13
See: Fong, Filial Nationalism among Chinese Teenagers with Global Identities.
14
See for example: Garry King, How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,
American Political Science Review, May 2013 (https://gking.harvard.edu/files/censored.pdf) and How the Chinese Govern-
ment Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged, issued on April 9, 2017. (http://gking.harvard.edu/
files/gking/files/50c.pdf)
145Nini Pan
15
voluntary 50-cent, which was literally written as 50-cent bringing their own provisions ( 带
abbr. ), to claim their comments in favor of the political authority or specific public
policies as self-motivated.
2. CCYL Strategies on Weibo and Bilibili
This chapter will demonstrate the prominent performance of the Central CCYL s official channels
on two influential network platforms: Sina Weibo ( https://weibo.com/) and Bilibili Video ( 哔
哔 视频 https://www.bilibili.com/), with analyzing the strategies and effects of approaching to and
mobilizing cyber nationalism of voluntary 50c. The Chinese governmental limitation of access to
global internet have not only blocked undesirable information, but also protected the domestic inter-
net firms from their well-developed foreign counterparts. And thus, some imitative services have tak-
en advantage of the proven technology and occupied a majority of the Chinese market share with
changing the societal lifestyle. Among them, Sina Weibo and Bilibili Video are quite typical, with the
former imitating Twitter located in U.S.A. and the latter copying the Japanese website named Nicon-
ico Douga. As well as their original editions, they both have drawn great attention as the base of
youth popular culture. The operation of CCYL official channels on them have indicated their con-
sciousness to fit in with the unique feature of each individual base separately, different from that of tra-
ditional propaganda.
2.1 Sina Weibo: the main task of anti-distortion
2.1.1 Features of Sina Weibo
As introduced above, the Sina Weibo (Microblog) is an imitative service of Twitter, an online news
and social networking service where users post and interact with messages. After starting on August
14, 2009, it took two years to reach a similar market penetration to Twitter, with taking up 30 of total
16
internet users of China. And, until the first quarter of 2017, according to the quarterly financial re-
port of the Sina Weibo Corporation, the number of active users per month reached 340 million, ex-
ceeding the number of 328 million of Twitter.17
As an imitative service, the Sina Weibo has been sharing similar functions, features and political/ so-
cial implications with the latter. The functions of forward, like and comment create a new style of
social interaction, in which the promulgator and his/her followers exchange information and opinion
directly. This style has been judged to make up for the deficiency of traditional mass media in timeli-
ness and feedback. And moreover, such equal and liberal interaction has been expected to break the
15
It s also possible that this concept was created by the opponents against nationalists in network debates for taunt, and finally
became transformed by cyber nationalists.
16
Kenneth Rapoza, China s Weibos vs US s Twitter: And the Winner Is? Forbes, May 17, 2011. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/
kenrapoza/2011/05/17/chinas-weibos-vs-uss-twitter-and-the-winner-is/#147182a529b5)
17
See: Weibo Reports First Quarter 2017 Financial Results , issued on May 16, 2017. (http://ir.weibo.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=
253076&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2273153)
146The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
dominant power of giant media organizations to issue and interpret information throughout the of-
fline/real world, in order to develop a cyber democracy innovation. For example, even remaining a
highly debated subject, the Arab Spring in the early 2010s impressed observers that social media
represented by Twitter and Facebook had facilitated the revolutionary process, according to promot-
ing communication among participants, organizing demonstrations, framing political debates, dissem-
inating information on their activities, and raising local and global awareness of ongoing events.18 It
wouldn t be strange to understand that why such features were also attractive to civil activists in China
who had already gathered some experiences of online civil movement through early forms of webpag-
es and bulletin board system from the middle 1990s. In comparison to such forms, the social network-
ing features of Weibo is beneficial for particular agendas to spread beyond limited and specialized
spaces, and reach common young people who used to be alienate from public topics. And, in compari-
son to traditional forms mainly covering participants in the developed coastal cities like Beijing,
Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Xiamen, the rapid market expansion of Weibo can extend public discussions
into second or third tier cities in the remote mainland. And, in addition to it, the facilitation for civil
movements in the middle East of Twitter, as argued earlier, has been brought in to judge the Weibo as
well and led to some positive evaluation. Therefore, it would not be surprising that CPC and govern-
mental institutions hadn t taken a long time to notice the potential political risk of this big tax-payer,
and logically strengthened the censorship,19 and the CCYL wouldn t be an exception.
2.1.2 Performance of the CCYL channel
Besides the censorship, various Party and governmental sections have been administratively ordered
to open official channels on Sina Weibo, as part of building transparent government affairs explicitly,
and orienting public opinion implicitly. In this general trend, the CCYL official channel on Sina Weibo
opened on December 27, 2013. Until July of 2017, it had got over 5 million followers, with more than
17000 posts. It is noteworthy that even though the quantity of followers may not be very outstanding
the top 3 of governmental channels are those of the Security Administration Bureau of the Ministry of
18
See for example: Ekaterina Stepanova, The Role of Information Communication Technologies in the Arab Spring , PONARS
Eurasia Policy Memo, No. 159, May, 2011 (http://pircenter.org/kosdata/page_doc/p2594_2.pdf); Mourtada, R.; Salem, F. Civil
Movements: The Impact of Facebook and Twitter, Arab Social Media Report, May, 2011 (http://www.dsg.fohmics.net/En/Pub
lication/Pdf_En/DSG_Arab_Social_Media_Report_No_2.pdf). And, a comparative study can be seen in: Trottier, D. & Fuchs,
C. (ed.) Social Media, Politics and the State: Protests, Revolutions, Riots, Crime and Policing in an Age of Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube, London: Routledge, 2014.
19
On details about the theoretical analysis and case study of civil movements through social networking media, especially Sina
Weibo, and the response of the Party-state, see for example: G. Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism On-
line, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009; G. Meikle and G. Redden (Eds.), News Online: Transformations and
Continuities, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011; Teng Biao, Rights Defence (weiquan), Microblogs (weibo), and Popular
Surveillance (weiguan): The Rights Defence Movement Online and Offline, Chinese Perspective, Vol. 3, 2012, pp. 29 39; La-
gerkvist, J. Principal-agent Dilemma in China s Social Media Sector? The Party-state and Industry Real-name Registration
Waltz, International Journal of Communication, Vol. 6, 2012, pp. 2628 2646; M. Bondes & G. Schucher, Derailed Emotions:
The Transformation of Claims and Targets during the Wenzhou Online Incident. Information, Communication & Society,
17(1),2014, pp. 45 65;C. Feng, Preserving Stability and Rights Protection: Conflict or Coherence? Journal of Current Chinese
Affairs, 42(2), 2013, pp. 21 55; Tang Lijun, Workers Right Defence on China s Internet: an Analysis of Actors, Information,
Communication & Society, 19(8), 2016.
147Nini Pan
Public Security (about 25 million), the Supreme People s Court (about 15 million) and the General Of-
fice of the State Council (about 14 million)20 the average amount of forwards and comments of
each post of the CCYL channel do not seem obviously different from the top channels, in comparison
with the tremendous gap in followers, implying that this channel has a larger ratio of active users of
participation and interaction, rather than other governmental channels audience preferring more to
receiving official information only. With further investigation into the details of posts and forwards,
we may find that the CCYL channel have been designed to, rather than issue information to be trans-
parent only, be an active participant getting deeply involved, trying to support and integrate the exist-
ing voluntary 50c resources on Weibo.
For this purpose, the channel must identify itself as a voluntary 50c, who can embed ideological
messages into human stories with socially positive energy in an entertaining style. Posted microb-
logs of the channel can be classified into three main types, building a logical framework which con-
nects private, social and political sphere. The first type of topics are those to get close to the youth
daily life, such as tips for daily life, funny videos, warm stories of common people especially those
engaging in public services or sharing childhood memories with young followers. The second type
is news, videos and comments about hot public issues and current events, especially those being con-
troversial with regards to domestic crisis handling, or oversea events important for China as stake-
holders. And, the last type is authoritative information on CPC and CCYL affairs sometimes young
pop stars are invited to participate in CCYL events, making mania fans enthusiastic followers of the
CCLY channel.
Under the construction of identification with voluntary 50c nationalists, the most successful and
typical public opinion orientation of the channel on is undoubtedly the post on July 7th, titling The
Three Gorgeous Dam can hold up floods, but cannot hold up flooding in some people s brain (
坝挡 挡 脑 , in which, flooding in one s brain means something
21
wrong with the brain as insulting remarks). Until July of 2017, this post had been read for more than
3.96 million times, with 24276 forwards, 10474 comments and 25242 likes. This article was written
by an online commentator of Global Times ( 环 时报 ), a most well-known nationalist newspaper of
China, and was posted in the form of long Weibo, a particular function of Sina Weibo to allow mi-
crobloggers to issue long articles not restricted by the 140-character limitation originated from Twitter.
In the lead of this widely spread article, operators of the channel handled a typical issue framing of
the voluntary 50c, as below:
During the last weeks, there has been a continuing torrential rain along the middle and lower
reaches of the Yangtze River. Soldiers, police and staff of municipal administration ( have
got into the hard work of flood control, and even the flood-fighting front. (However, for some news
media, it s just their natural duty, and thus, they never bother to report their efforts.) On the contrary
20
All the data are to update until July, 2017, according to the public statistical list of Sina Weibo: http://data.weibo.com/top/hot.
21
See: http://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id 2309403994545674167450
148The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
to such common people dedicating their hard work silently to the crisis management are those key-
board men ( 键盘 , a ironic concept deriving from the name of American comic heroes like super-
man or batman, which means men to criticize a lot online without practicing any offline ) hiding in
the safe place behind computer screens. While soldiers, police and municipal administration staff are
sparing no effort to protecting people s life and property safety, are setting off an annoying reverse
current online. This article will expose some typical performances of those keyboard men to you.
The agitative remarks indicate three obvious features of voluntary 50c expression. Firstly, it speci-
fied its target of criticism as big VIPs ( V) it means those identity-verified users with a large
quantity of followers, who are usually judged as opinion leaders and commercial mass media. As dis-
cussed above, this is exactly a typical feature of voluntary 50c consciousness to direct against lying
intellectuals whom they thought to be. And in addition, this article participated into an existing con-
troversy on a big VIP (a well-known TV presenter) to say the mayor of Nanjing as deserving death
while complaining about floods outside its housing estate. In other words, the channel didn t start a
public opinion event, but just intervened in the black and white controversy to support and encourage
one side, and, with the aid of its political authority, attempting to be a decisive force for the final con-
clusion. However, to identify with most young nationalists, this channel couldn t crudely use an au-
thoritative attitude to simply suppress opponents, which would make it seem no difference from a tra-
ditional propaganda bureaucracy. Alternatively, it chose to argue its side in a reasonable style to
shape a neutral and de-politicalized image. This article criticized the big VIP as below:
Last morning, he (the big VIP ) took a controversial action. While making complaints of the flood
on the street outside his housing estate, he actually wrote four characters that the mayor deserves
death. Ironically, soon afterward, the mayor really visited the neighborhood to investigate on the
flood solution, and this led to another controversy, with some netizens taking him as getting down to
business only after being scolded. However, according to reports of local media, the mayor
supervised on flood prevention at the front on 3, attended a pertinent meeting on 4, visited the area
where the TV presenter lives for the drainage work of this area had not been effective on 5, ac-
cording to his established schedule, and went to check dams on that afternoon. And, in addition,
according to the introduction of local netizens to the author, it s not the first time that street suffers
from flooding, for various object reasons (and in the following paragraph, the author also admit-
ted that the municipal government should be responsible for the lagged construction of drainage facil-
ities). For example, the housing estate is locating in a depression; the mistakes of the housing de-
veloper to lift foundations; under the rapid development of recent years, the main drainage channel,
friendship River has reached its maximum.
Secondly, despite of its focus on a current event, this article still reminded audience of the Three
Gorgeous Dam Project, the long-sustained and symbolic topic in Chinese political controversy, well
reflecting the conflict between the authoritative and development ethics of the Party-state, and the
critics from domestic dissenters and developed democracies. In Chinese governmental discourse, this
149Nini Pan
project is a reflection of its great industrial achievements, which backs its legitimacy. On the contrary,
according to civil societal expression, this great project is nothing but a representation of political sup-
pression in decision making, disregard of human rights of environmental emigrants, and damages on
the natural environment. And for the voluntary 50c who prefers to development more than their
cyber nationalist predecessors emphasizing aggressively on political, diplomatic and martial dignity,
oversea critics of TGDP remain important for its reflection of the Western distortion to deny Chi-
nese development. That s why the first section of this article is targeted at what the author thought
unjustified criticism of TGDP of journalists and big VIPs lacking professional knowledge. The
political implication of the TGDP was replaced, according to the list of simple statistical data, by a
seemingly neutral and scientific meaning.
Lastly, this article tries to reshape the image of governmental officials and staff of violence organs
like the army, the police and the municipal administration as ordinary working people in a romantic
style, in order to inspire the empathy of the youth. As we know, such persons and institutions they be-
long to generally play a negative role in civil societal issue framing, which take the intermediary posi-
tion to embody the authoritative suppression and bureaucratic defects, and further, as a contrast to ef-
ficiency and moral potential of civil societal activists. This article, nonetheless, put the opposite
positions exactly upside down, with arguing that Party workers, soldiers and governmental officials
were working hard enough to gain respect and empathy of common people while big VIPs, mass
media and keyboard men are designed to only talk big. Factually, this converse issue framing just
followed that created by grass-root voluntary 50c in 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, which announced
civil activists to have exaggerated their contributions to relief work.
2.2 Bilibili Video: manipulating sub-cultural style
2.2.1 Features of Bilibili Video
Founded in 2010, Bilibili Video ( 哔 哔 视频 ) is a video sharing website which allows individual
end users to upload and share personal, business, or royalty-free videos and to watch them. The You-
Tube may be the most representative among this type of internet services. And in China, websites like
Youku ( 优 ) or Tudou ( ) had earlier copied this pattern and attained quite a great success.
However, the Bilibili has its own characteristics to emerge, which are all related its object of imitation,
the Niconico Douga of Japan set in 2007. Imitative of Niconico s technical feature, Bilibili users com-
ments are overlaid directly onto the video they targeted to, synced to a specific playback time. This
kind of commenting pattern can create a virtual sense of shared watching experience: comments di-
rectly respond to contents of and events occurring in the video, in sync with viewers.
And moreover, as this shared watching experience originally oriented to Otaku (roughly, mania
fans) of ACG (Anime, Comic [manga], Game) productions, who prefer to virtual society based on
interest rather than real social life, users majority of Niconico Donga are of this commonality, distrib-
uting globally including the mainland of China. However, because of the limited access to foreign web-
150The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
sites and loose management on copyrights, Chinese Otaku finally committed to founding a Chinese
version of Niconico, and Bilibili was not the only or even the first one but achieved the greatest com-
mercial success. For this reason, Bilibili had been from the very beginning colored with Japanese
Otaku subculture. This succession implies that, on one side, in comparison with Sina Weibo, users
of Bilibili are more concentrated on urban youth who search after and even want to create sub-cultural
Otaku elements, and on the other side, as a paradise for Japanese culture, the nationalism or pa-
triotism is a more sensitive keyword on this platform, because, based on reviewing Cold War experi-
ences, pop cultural production has also been judged as a ideological weapon for United States to defeat
the Soviet bloc. And thus, it s not surprising that both the Chinese government and nationalist intel-
lectuals keep wary about the soft power of Japanese ACG culture, which the Japanese government
also announces to be its precious resources in public diplomacy.
Another feature is the potential political inclination of Otaku tastes. The emphasis on a common
identity makes the de-politicalized entertaining life possible to be repoliticalized by particular orienta-
tion. Early from the 1970s, represented by Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School of cultural studies
of which the former was one of the founding figures, cultural theorists especially in Western Europe
had begun to pay attention to the political potential of youth s subculture, judging it as a possible re-
sistance to mainstream bourgeoisie consumerism and capitalist cultural hegemony, and further, the
capitalist social and political system. According to the Birmingham School, culture is a critical site of
22
social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled.
Different from traditional concept of resistance with violence and radical factors, sub-cultural resis-
tance is embodied by unique style, fashion and value, which constitute an abstract and symbolic ritu-
al, making a common identity among participants in a particular circle. The potential function of
such identity and ritual is to express although it s only symbolic and lead to a collective solution
to the structural dilemma hidden under the consumerism and hedonism.23 Even though such analyti-
cal framework of sub culture, especially the practical effectiveness of the expected symbolic collective
solution has long been doubted, it still always encourages young sub-cultural figures to establish a
unique identity.
In this sense, Niconico Douga, at its original stage, used to consciously express its cultural challenge
and construct an identity beyond pure entertainment. On June 1st, 2007, one of the founding figures
issued an article titled with Niconico Declaration and announced this day to be the Constitution Day
of Niconico. This Constitution outlines an idealized social life about information exchange, media
comments, intelligence and even emotions, human identity and rational outlook on this internet plat-
22
James Procter, Stuart Hall, Routledge Critical Thinkers, 2004. p. 2.
23
See for example: Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, eds. Resistance Through Ritual: Youth Subculture in Post-war Britain, London:
Hutchinson, 1976; Dich Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen, 1979; Stuart Hall, eds. Culture, Media
and Language, London: Hutchinson, 1980.
151Nini Pan
form.24 And in addition, this website also directly participates in political events. In 2009, it held an
opinion poll s exit survey on the national election of that year. Against the real success of Democratic
Party, public opinion of Niconico users provided overwhelming support to the Liberal Democratic
Party,25 which had drawn observers attention to the right deviation of Niconico Otakus. This exam-
ple cannot prove Niconico users to be exactly right-wing , however, it may indicates that the challenge
to reality remains a potential dynamics for the Otaku taste group to keep touch with politics.
If the potential political choice of Niconico otaku users derives from the challenge to real society,
Chinese otaku users on Bilibili, in addition, are confronted with another conflict. It s between the taste
for Japanese ACG and the potential national identity. As the argument of Cool Japan theory,26 the
soft power of ACG has a possibility to reconstruct the identity of youth. However, is it possible that
this conflict may also create a consciousness to keep national identity? The performance of the CCYL
channel in Bilibili may show us the governmental utilization of this potential.
2.2.2 CCYL Performance
Similar to that in Sina Weibo, the CCYL performance in Bilibili also takes advantage of existing cy-
ber nationalist resources, decorating the regular propaganda into a lovely play rich in current fashion
of sub-cultural style, adapting itself to the otaku identity.
The CCYL channel in Bilibili opened on December 24 of 2015, after it had attained abound experi-
ence of online opinion orientation in Sina Weibo, and issued 433 videos until August 1 of 2017.
Among these videos, the most popular it has been played for more than 776000 times and obtained
a barrage (comments in sync, 弹 ) of about 3000 comments until the July of 2017 is obviously
nationalist , a 48-second episode spliced from a press conference of the Chinese Ministry of Defense
regarding a Sino Japanese military controversy. This video is titled makes me a mania fan , and most
of the comments seem to show a kind of adore to the handsome and cool spokesman, full of on-
line fashionable discourses. Another recent contribution which had been played for 156000 times and
gained 3781 barrage comments during two days can also demonstrate the nationalist propaganda in
Bilibili otaku style. The video is a show of the military development of China, with the title How is
it possible for our PLA to be that fiery, borrowing from the title of a Japanese light novel of otaku
taste, How is it possible for my younger sister to be that lovely. The style of these popular contribu-
tions demonstrates that visitors to the CCYL s Bilibili channel share a dual identity as Japanese-style
fan and nationalist simultaneously.
The efforts of the CCYL to utilize and promote a grass-root work titled That year, that rabbit and
those stories (abbr. That rabbit ) make a most important example of its strategies in Bilibili to adapt
24
See details in: 9 http://info.nicovideo.jp/base/declaration.html. However, along with its increasing access
to market, the Constitution had been inclined to focus on dealing with the contradiction between copyright and users
free choice, see its instruction on the amendment to the Constitution in: http://blog.nicovideo.jp/niconews/
2008/06/001264.html; http://blog.nicovideo.jp/niconews/2009/06/003148.html
25
See detailed statistics in http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/nm8089297.
26
See: Douglas McGray, Japan s Gross National Cool, Foreign Policy, May 2002. (http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/11/11/ja
pans-gross-national-cool)
152The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
nationalist propaganda to otaku taste. Created from 2011, this manga doujinshi drawn by a ACG
journal editor in Kunming, a far Southwest city of China, has now become generally known as a rep-
resentative of the voluntary 50c, and reached quite a good commercial achievement. Despite of its
simple contents of stories and the shortage of drawing techniques, the grass-root author at his twenties
spent less than three years, with no sponsorship, to get one hundred thousand fans in Sina Weibo,
where he started to issue this work. A paradox for this work is that, on one hand, it is a typical reflec-
tion of cool Japan soft power many believe that it imitates a Japanese work titled Hetalia, for the
latter personify various nation-states into lovely characters, and That rabbit match them with ani-
mals, with PRC being that rabbit. And in addition, That rabbit uses a large amount of trivial allu-
sions (neta) sourced to various Japanese ACG works in order to make accounts funny or even support
the storyline. It s no exaggeration to say that only a veteran otaku can follow the whole story details
and respond to points the author set to be interesting, which, in other words, means the core style.
On the other hand, nevertheless, the main story of this work is telling military achievements of the
Party-state. The governmental key issue frameworks of imperialist oppression, historical dilemma of
China, leading role of CCP, People s army, socialist achievements and peaceful rising are indicated
prominently and especially, Japan is given a negative role. The hit of such work bears out the para-
dox symbiosis of nationalist identity and a de-politicalized sub-cultural identity sourced to a foreign
country s soft power,27 making this work appealing to the CCYL.
With its resources widely rooted in universities and other youth organizations, and the long-time ac-
tive participation in the Weibo public sphere, the CCYL had, far earlier than other propaganda institu-
tions who were also ordered to pay more attention to internet and young culture, noticed the influence
of That rabbit and seriously thought about its potential function. The CCYL s strategy to utilize this
work can be judged as having three stages: hitchhiking, incorporation, and further utilization. Firstly,
when the CCYL opened its channel in Weibo, as we know, governmental channels were still aliens in
this sphere. And thus, to (or just pretend to) search after a youth ready-made cultural symbol would
help to shape an equal and friendly image. On April 13 of 2015, the CCYL channel in Sina Weibo
28
posted a promotion of one episode of the animated series of That rabbit. In this post, the CCYL
personified itself into a fan, sentimental and feminine, highly praising this episode it told about the
Changjinho battle in the Korean War to be super- moving with a strong crying mark. This post
rapidly drew high attention from the rabbit fans. We choose several comments with most like s for
example, as listed below.
Even the Central Party institution is pressing the author to speed up his creating. The author should
take care of political scrutiny. (with smiling marks)
Mashe (the nickname of the author), now you should work harder or you will make political mis-
27
Of course, there is also very severe controversy on this work within Chinese ACG fans, even leading to an offline security
case.
28
See detailed contents and comments in: http://weibo.com/3937348351/CbAnhfTvS?type=comment#_rnd1501648397269
153Nini Pan
takes! (with smiling marks).
It s the best video for Qingming festival. Thanks CCYL for spurring on the lazy author for us! Great
style!
May the Central Party institutions try to actively make more works like this?
I suddenly found the CCYL so lovely ( moe ).
These comments transferred an atmosphere that these fans began to take the CCYL as one of them,
relaxing and easily talking jokes. And at the same time, the CCYL s encouragement seemed to be
from the Central Party also strengthened fans love to the work and their nationalist belief. And in
addition, another less important but still interesting point was that avatars the commentators used
were Japanese ACG characters and pop singers.
Besides the hitchhiking for image up which is beneficial for the Party institution to gain more access
to the sub-cultural youth s taste circle, the CCYL propaganda further directly play a role as a sponsor
of the animation making of That Rabbit. In other words, the grass-root work has been formally in-
corporated as semi-governmental resources for patriotic education. However, different from tradition-
al experiences, the incorporation is not via administrative order but financial ties. Along with the cur-
rent growth of financial budget, governmental institutions have gained more support for so-called
investigation and research program ( 调 项 ), or innovation program ( 创 项 ), which is ap-
pointed to reform and develop the bureaucratic ability and operative techniques on intelligence and
governance. This policy offers the CCYL propaganda both beneficial conditions and pressure spe-
cial funds are hard to be occupy personally while failure to spend them could influence future alloca-
tion. Under this situation, the sponsorship for the animated series of That Rabbit is put in an inno-
vation program. Factually, despite of the strict supervision on money expenditure, the approval
procedure was much more uncomplicated, since how to innovate the online opinion orientation still
kept a mist, especially for veteran staff accustomed to traditional methods. That s why young staff who
were also skilled cyber surfers and ACG fans gained enough space to perform more informally. Ac-
cording to private interviews with some operators, the decision making on materially promoting That
Rabbit was strongly promoted by a very limited circle composed of several CCYL staff, animation
makers and other cyber activists. Fortunate for them, this adventure, more or less, have achieved
positive results.
One of the positive results for the CCYL s sponsorship for That Rabbit is that this work, especial-
ly the characters and their style are incorporated as a core resource for the CCYL to decorate its pro-
paganda and strengthen the emotional association with those otaku nationalists. The utilization of
That Rabbit has made the CCYL s standing in Bilibili natural and acceptable. And in addition, the
right of sponsors allows the CCYL to use characters and style in That Rabbit to create propaganda
videos. For example, the CCYL have produced a serializing videos titled I and the engine of my coun-
try ( ) in order to introduce to young people core concepts of national policies or
events, which is mainly sponsored by the CCYL propaganda sector, created by a media team with clear
154The Mobilization of Cyber-Nationalism by the Communist Youth League
self identity as voluntary 50c with some narratives provided by well-educated young researchers on
social sciences. An episode of this series on the topic of military parade extensively used the animal
characters of That Rabbit to represent martial forces of various countries.29 And the effects were
quite outstanding that this video has been played more than 150000 times and attained about 2000
barrage comments, comparing to the average number of 20000 30000 playing times and less than
1000 comments for other episodes.
3. Conclusion: A Brief Causal Analysis
As a crucial organization for the CPC s mass work, it s no doubt that the Chinese Youth League has
various regular work contents rather than the online mobilization of nationalism, or rather, such na-
tionalist performance is an irregular operation deviating, slightly, from traditional administrative pro-
cess of the League system. However, it s this irregular manipulation to bring a deep impression to
public opinion of the recent years. With the analysis in previous chapters, we may find three dynamics
for the positive effects of the CCYL online to mobilize nationalism. And these dynamics have func-
tioned practically through young CCYL staff at lower or basic levels of the propaganda section. Firstly,
such pressure created a grey zone where young staff who were also skilled cyber surfers could oper-
ate, to a certain extent, flexibly, with the assistance of both institutional resources and their personal
professional experiences. On one hand, these young staff, lacking the autonomy of innovation under
regular administrative procedures, have been acquiesced to promote their action agendas under the
unprecedented pressure of the reform era of the highest-level leadership on the Youth League
which forced it to play an effective role in the mass work of network age. On the other hand, institu-
tional resources have backed up their operation, especially the potential identity produced by the
Youth League membership or ex-membership although it may not make any practical sense in ev-
eryday life among a overwhelming majority of middle-school and university students, with system-
atized YL committees and branches which can get touch with members as the organization wants. And
therefore, CCYL propaganda staff have legitimate and effective networks to search for and sponsor in-
telligence resources which they are identified with among students and young tutors, a most active
group of cyber surfers.
And secondly, the existing new type of nationalism has provided operators in the CCYL propaganda
with ready-made objects and style of mobilization. This article, as well as a number of observers, use
the concept of voluntary 50-cent to refer to such new wave and also young nationalists practicing it.
It has been featured in, as discussed in the chapter 1, being mainly promoted by urban middle-class
youth, targeting at lying media and intellectuals dominating discourse power, and acting in global
pop-cultural and sub-cultural style. Especially in accordance with extensive online debates and offline
demonstrations around Beijing Olympics, this form of nationalism widely obtained a great echo with
29
See details in: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av8072602?from search&seid 17860746712117561263
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